A Wider View

I apologize to those who came hoping to see snail’s tongues or some other minute wonder of nature, but every now and then I like to be standing up when I click the shutter, rather than lying in a prone position in the forest litter. A wider view is a little easier on the knees, which seem to creak and pop a little more now than they used to.

Sky and Telescope’s Sky Week program told me that I’d be able to see Saturn just above and to the left of the full moon last week and I saw what looked like a very bright star, but all my camera could see was the moon. I was happy to see that it had some yellow in it and had lost the harsh, white coldness of winter. Of course the moon doesn’t change color and was yellow only because I was seeing it through our atmosphere, but I kind of like this color. It feels warmer.

The sun was also playing color games. Last year corn was grown in this field and then last fall the farmer planted a cover crop of some kind. In the late afternoon sunshine it was such an impossible bright green color that I had to stop and get a picture of it. My color blindness cheating software tells me that it is yellow green.

I went to one of my favorite viewing spots in Marlborough, New Hampshire over the weekend to get a picture of Mount Monadnock. I don’t really need any more pictures of the mountain but I can’t seem to stop taking them.  When I was about 15 or so I foolishly thought that someday I would have made a list of every wildflower that grew on its flanks. I quickly realized that two lifetimes wouldn’t be enough to compile such a list.

 

I saw some fuzzy wild ginger leaves (Asarum canadense,) but no blossoms yet.

Once again I found a “late fall polypore” that didn’t know it was mid spring. This is Ischnoderma resinosum, whose common name is literally “Late Fall Polypore.” These are said to fruit on hardwood logs late in the year, but I wonder if temperature and day length isn’t a trigger for them. Days can have the same length and temperature in the spring as they do in fall and these seemed relatively fresh.

I expect trails to be muddy at times but this was ridiculous. Luckily there was plenty of room in a field off to the left so I could go around it.

It has been dry enough here to raise the brush fire danger to high. The water in the giant mud puddle in the previous photo went down so fast that the mud around the edges hadn’t even hardened when I saw it. Unfortunately frogs, counting on April showers that never came, miscalculated and didn’t lay their eggs deep enough to survive the lack of rain. Even nature makes an occasional mistake and in this case the price paid is fewer frogs in the forest, and that means more black flies and mosquitoes.

I stopped at a small pond hoping to see some frogs but all I saw were reflections and pollen.

I saw some colorful turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) but no turkeys.

 

Sometimes you have to climb a hill to see a mountain and that’s exactly what I had to do to see across the Connecticut River valley to Stratton Mountain in Vermont. On Sunday I climbed the hill known as “High Blue” in Walpole, New Hampshire. Whoever named this hill got it right because the view is always very blue. It has been quite warm so I was surprised to see snow still on the ski trails.

I’m seeing a lot of trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens) flowers now. These are one of the most fragrant flowers in the forest, but since they grow so close to the ground you have to get down on your knees to smell them.  While I was down there smelling them I thought I’d get a picture too, so all of you who were betting that I couldn’t get through an entire post without at least one macro shot were right.

The influence of fine scenery, the presence of mountains, appeases our irritations and elevates our friendships. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thanks for coming by.

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